He opened up to me - what does it mean? (10 reasons guys do it)

There’s a guy who likes to open up to you about his life, his past, and who shares his personal problems with you.

And you’re not sure how to interpret it.

He’s been confiding in you and sharing things you wouldn’t necessarily have expected him to, and you’re trying to figure out what that means.

What’s he trying to tell you? Is there some kind of hidden message here? Or is there no hidden meaning at all?

How should you interpret it and what should you do about it?

The bad news is, there’s no simple answer to this one. It could mean one of a huge number of things. It all depends on the context, and it’s always tough to understand what’s going on in another person’s mind.

It’s hard to know what another person’s thinking even if you know them well, so it’s almost impossible if they’re a relative stranger to you.

To help you figure this out, here are some of the most common reasons a guy might open up to a girl.

Have a read through and see which one of these speaks to you. See which one(s) your gut tells you is true in your case.

1. He trusts you.

He feels like he can trust you not to spread whatever he tells you any further, because you’re not one to gossip.

He knows that if he opens up to you, his secret will be safe and won’t end up being spread all around the office or to your mutual friends.

Perhaps you give off a trustworthy vibe in general, and always have people randomly opening up to you and sharing their innermost secrets, even when you don’t think you’ve invited their confidences.

Or perhaps there’s a reason why he feels he can trust you particularly. That might be because he knows you’ve kept secrets in the past, whether his or other people’s.

Or it might be because the two of you have something in common that makes him think he can trust you or you’ve done something in particular to show him you can be relied upon and are a good person to trust.

2. He feels more comfortable speaking about his problems to a girl than to his male friends.

Being a guy is a tough gig in a lot of ways. Although the ways women suffer are generally more obvious, the patriarchy we live in takes its toll on us all in lots of different ways.

In our society, men are still very much expected to keep their emotions to themselves, and they often don’t feel like they can share their feelings or problems with their male friends. So they bottle everything up instead.

That can mean that they sometimes reach bursting point and find themselves in desperate need of a confidante or just someone who will offer a listening ear. But they only feel like they can open up to girl or they’ll be judged.

If the two of you have built something of a rapport, he might want to confide in you just because you’re a woman, and he knows you’ll be more sympathetic than the men in his life would be.

3. He’s particularly confused or upset right now and is more open than normal.

Maybe he’s just going through a particularly rough time right now and so he’s lowered his normal emotional barriers and is more open than he would be otherwise.

There could be something stressful or upsetting going on in his personal or professional life which he just can’t keep to himself, as he’s feeling overwhelmed and like he can’t cope.

If his emotions are running high, he might have less of a filter and be less concerned about what other people think of him than he usually would be.

4. He likes you and wants a friendship with you.

Maybe he really enjoys your company and this is his way of showing you that he’d like to be friends with you.

He’d like to spend time with you and develop a platonic relationship. Maybe you share a specific interest or background that’s a great foundation for a friendship, or he thinks you’re great company.

Friendships between different sexes can be extremely rewarding and give you insights you’d never get otherwise.

5. He likes you and wants a romantic relationship with you.

Maybe he’s opening up to you because he wants to find a way to start building a romantic connection with you.

There are lots of different ways that people show romantic interest in each other, and opening up to someone they like can be one of them.

He could be trying to show you what’s going on under the surface so he can start to forge a bond with you and figure out if there’s potential there.

This might not be something he’s doing consciously – he might not have a cunning plan to seduce you that involves sharing his innermost thoughts with you.

But if he likes you that way, he’ll want to spend more time with you and get to know you, and this might be his way of making that happen. This is especially true if he’s a shy person and isn’t comfortable with putting his feelings out there without any preambles.

6. He values the female perspective and wants advice.

Maybe he values the female perspective on life, the universe, and everything in general, and so he’s turned to you for advice.

He wants to know if you see a certain situation differently to the way he does and if you have any valuable pearls of wisdom to share with him.

In this case, he might be opening up to you just because you’re a woman and you happen to be there when he needed that perspective.

7. He wants to share the real him with you, rather than just his public persona.

A lot of people present quite a different persona to the world to what’s really going on underneath it all.

They feel like they need to put on a show for the benefit of other people, and they rarely let their guard down and let the world see what they’re actually like.

If he’s opening up to you, he might be trying to help you see through that persona and understand the real him.

8. He’s building rapport with you.

Maybe the two of you have just met and he knows that it’s important to build a relationship with you. He wants you to like him and is keen to make a good impression.

That might be because you’re working together, because he knows that he needs to get you on side for things to work well between you to make both of your lives easier.

Or it might be in your personal life. Maybe he’s a new friend or family member’s partner and he knows that your approval is important, so he’s making an extra special effort to connect with you and find some common ground.

9. He’s using you to offload his emotional burdens because he knows you’ll listen.

Maybe the fact that he’s opening up to you doesn’t have much to do with you at all, and he’s just using you as a sounding board.

Perhaps he can see that you’re a kind, empathetic person and knows that you’ll politely listen to his problems, even though he doesn’t really want advice from you specifically.

Maybe he just needs someone to talk to, and you happen to be that someone as you were in the right (or wrong) place at the right time.

He wouldn’t be willing to listen to anything you wanted to confide in him, but he just needs someone to offload his emotional burden onto.

10. He’s a very open book.

Is he open with other people too? Maybe he’s just happy to share his inner thoughts and feelings with pretty anyone he comes across.

Maybe he doesn’t have much of a filter and isn’t shy about telling everyone exactly what he thinks or feels.

He’s just a really open guy, far more in touch with his feelings than the majority of men in Western society.

And that’s a great thing, but it can be confusing when it’s something you’re not used to. It can sometimes be a little overwhelming.

If you can, observe him to see whether he’s sharing the same kinds of things with other people, or if he seems to have singled you out.

If he’s just an open person, you’ll know that the way he is with you doesn’t have any hidden meaning.

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He opened up to me – what does it mean? (10 reasons guys do it)